


to leap without a shove

by DreamBrother



Series: a little parenthesis in eternity [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24394864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamBrother/pseuds/DreamBrother
Summary: What if Danny and Steve first met because they got stuck in an elevator together?
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: a little parenthesis in eternity [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761496
Comments: 24
Kudos: 293





	to leap without a shove

**Author's Note:**

> Things I take liberties with in this AU:  
> \- how elevators are repaired  
> \- how many elevators are in a building with x number of floors  
> \- how custody arrangements works  
> \- how the American university/professor system works
> 
> Disclaimers:  
> \- I love lawyers really, my best friend is a lawyer  
> \- I can't write short fics. This was meant to be 2k max. They haven't even exchanged names by that point in this fic.  
> \- Some dialogue taken from 4x20 (the episode where Danny gets stuck in an elevator with a coroner and a body)
> 
> Title from Aerosmith's Love in an Elevator (side note: has anyone seen the video for this??? It is SO RAUNCHY. I feel bad for all the flak Miley Cyrus got for Wrecking Ball when this was over twenty years earlier and much more sexually explicit, I felt. Poor Miley).

"Fucking sharks," Danny muttered under his breath as he approached the bank of elevators and pressed the call button, pressing it a few more times and extra hard for good measure when the doors of any didn't automatically slide open in the face of his ire. Rationally he knew there was no point pressing the button more than once just because his own buttons had been pushed, the elevator was going to take its own sweet time, but it was a better option than punching his ex-wife's lawyer in the face at the very least. 

"Come on, come on, come on." Danny glowered as the digital display cheerfully told him that the elevator most likely to get to him first was currently on floor twelve, and his hope that it wouldn't stop on floor thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen were dashed as the fucking thing paused on every.single.floor before his. At least he was on the top floor and he didn't have to worry about the direction the elevator would take once he got into it. 

"Fucking finally," he murmured when the bell dinged and the doors to the elevator he was standing in front of opened to reveal an empty car. He hadn't even taken one step when he was bumped to the side, his mouth falling open as he realized that the six-foot dark-haired jerk stepping into the elevator in front of him had been such an impatient asshole he'd shouldered past Danny without so much as a by-your-leave. 

The six-foot dark-haired jerk who was now standing in the elevator that _Danny_ had summoned and was staring at _Danny_ with arms crossed against his chest, glowering as though it was _Danny's_ fault the elevator was stopped. 

Glaring back at this dick of a man, Danny stepped into the car, standing shoulder to shoulder before reaching forward to press the button for the parking garage, deliberately not asking the man which floor he wanted. It's not like Mama Williams would find out anytime soon that her son had been rude, considering she was currently eight thousand miles away. 

His deliberate non-action did not pass by the douche bag as he heard a huff and saw a tanned arm reach across him to press the button for the ground floor. 

The doors had just about started closing when his day got better. 

"Daniel!" 

Stepping out of the conference room that Danny had just vacated with extreme prejudice, Rachel was making a beeline for him, her heels clicking with enough aggression on the tiled floor to cause heads to turn in her direction. Her lawyer was following after her like a puppy, although how that twitch of a man thought he could have a snowball's chance in hell of stopping a Rachel-Danny showdown, Danny didn't know. 

Keeping a serene smile on his face, the exact one that he knew drove Rachel crazy, Danny was frantically hoping the elevator doors would start to close. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the arm of the man next to him inch towards the operating panel, reaching for the 'door open' button. His hand shot out, grasping the man's wrist tightly preventing any forward moment. 

The gods must have been smiling down on Danny for once because he had the joy and pleasure of witnessing the elevator doors shut in Rachel's face, the fury on her face unmistakable when she realized she was too far away to halt the descent of the elevator, and with it, Danny's refusal to continue custody talks. 

He was not going to let her take his daughter and son to Las Vegas, and that was that. It was enough that he had given up everything in Jersey to move to the seventh circle of hell that was Oahu. 

When the lawyer had tried to sleazeball his way into suggesting Danny could just as easily move to Vegas as he had Oahu as Danny didn't have any dependents on this island, and perhaps the cost of living on the mainland would be more agreeable for Danny's wallet, he had had enough. He had left the meeting under the guise of going to the bathroom. It wasn't his fault his ex-wife and her lawyer had assumed it was the bathroom down the hall, not the one in Danny's house. 

Letting out a tiny sigh of relief, he barely cared when the wrist he was still holding on to was ripped out of his hold. Refusing to apologize considering how he'd been shoulder checked just a minute before, without apology, Danny craned his neck up to the digital display that slowly counted down from 16, repeating the numbers in his head as he tried to find his own equilibrium. Counting down from ten had never been a tactic that cooled his anger, but maybe sixteen would be better. 

"Lawyer?" 

The word, although murmured, was loud in the confined space that held only the two men. Danny glanced at the man next to him, taking note of the sizable tattoo peeking out under the olive green t-shirt that covered the man's not unnoticeable bicep. 

"Ex-wife," Danny replied, figuring he could do without fourteen more floors worth of frosty silence when he’d just had an hour of it with his ex. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man nod. 

And that probably would have been the extent of communication with the stranger had the elevator not jerked to a stop, the sudden cessation of motion causing Danny to grab at the man with one hand and the railing alongside the walls of the car with the other as he fought to keep his balance. The lights flickered briefly but thankfully they stayed on even as the shrieking of brakes told them something had gone very, very wrong. 

"Shit," he heard the other man murmur even as his own hand gripped Danny under the elbow, his hold falling away once both men had straightened and regained their footing as they realized the elevator had come to an abrupt stop. 

Danny would have been offended at the way the man barged past him yet again, this time to get to the control panel, had Danny not used the motion to step back, his back resting against the wall, his head tilting up as he started to make his breaths deep and slow. In, and out. Deep, and slow. 

"Come on, come on," Danny heard the other man murmur over the sound of a button being pressed repeatedly, to no avail. There was no sound of a ringtone or an alarm being activated, no buzzing, no building manager's voice coming through the speaker to suggest that somebody was aware of two men currently stuck in an elevator between two floors in this overpriced commercial building that housed the offices of the lawyers Rachel and Stan had employed the services of to deprive Danny of his kids. 

Confident the other man had the situation in hand, Danny kept his eyes closed and tried to regulate his breathing, trying to tell his mind that no, he wasn't currently trapped in an area smaller than most prison cells. 

“Hey, your phone got any signal?” Danny opened his eyes to see that the man had pulled out his phone and was staring at it. Danny did the same, his heart thumping away in his chest as he realized that he, too, didn’t have any signal. 

“Well, looks like we’re stuck here until someone realizes we’re missing,” the other man said as he stuck his phone back in his pocket, even as he started fingering the gap between the elevator doors. 

“No, no, there’s gotta be a way out,” Danny said as he reached for the control panel. Maybe this idiot didn’t know how to press the alarm button properly, considering he definitely didn’t know how to wait his turn when getting on an elevator without shouldering people along the way. 

“I think that’s a lost cause, buddy,” the man said, and Danny didn’t like the glimmer of amusement he could detect in the man’s voice. “I think you need to accept that we’re going to be stuck here for a while. It’s a busy office building, I’m sure someone will notice soon that one of the elevators isn’t working.”

“There are three other elevators,” Danny argued back because of course Rachel’s lawyers would be charging their clients enough to rent office space in a building with four elevators. His quick glance at the other man pissed him right off, dampening his panic for a second. “You think this is funny? This is not funny. I’ve heard of people getting stuck in elevators for days.”

“I really don’t think that’s gonna happen.” 

“My cellphone doesn’t work, your cellphone doesn’t work, the alarm doesn’t work, there are three other elevators that people in the building can use, no one is going to notice that this one isn’t moving, okay? We’re stuck here, we’re trapped.” Hardly noticing his body’s movement, Danny’s back met the wall of the elevator as he hunched over, his hands on his knees. 

The combination of his fears being voiced both in his head and out loud made his anxiety skyrocket and Danny closed his eyes as he tried to picture himself not in this fucking elevator, but in the vast openness of the baseball field he’d spent hours in until his torn ACL had put paid to his potential future in baseball. 

Except his English teacher had always said his imagination was shit as she'd rip into yet another one of his stories he'd had to submit for the creative writing part of his grade. No matter how hard he tried, the realist in him was telling his brain, his spine, his lungs, that Danny was currently trapped in a box hovering twelve floors of the ground, and if his ears weren't deceiving him, nobody knew of his predicament yet and that meant no one was coming to get him out of here. 

Red spots began dancing behind his eyelids as he squeezed his thighs tighter, the pain from cutting off his circulation not enough to jerk his mind out of the loop of trappedtrappedtrapped. He was six years old again, locked in the dustysmellymusty closet in his grandmother's house by his dick of an older cousin, Marky, even as his nonna snored away in her armchair, unaware of her favorite grandchild's predicament who was off school that day because of a cough and a fever. 

Except that time, his mom had found him when she'd gotten off work and come by to pick him up. Danny couldn't hope for a repeat, not when he was eight thousand miles away from his family, trapped on this island, trapped in this building, trapped in this cage. 

His knees would have met the unforgiving metal floor of the elevator as his legs failed in their role of holding him up had hands not suddenly gripped his biceps. 

“Hey!” A voice came from directly in front of Danny but he refused to open his eyes, shaking his head instead as his lungs tightened in his chest, each inhale suddenly requiring that much more effort, that much more energy. Out out out, he needed to get out. 

“Listen to me. Hey! Listen to me. You’re fine, you’re safe. This elevator is secure, it’s just a technical issue.” The voice was firm, demanding, a tone that was used to being heard. That voice had not yet met one Daniel Willians. 

Danny shook his head again. The hands on his biceps squeezed as Danny’s breathing started ramping up even more.

“Hey, hey! Breathe man, just breathe. In and out, come on, slow your breathing or else you’re gonna pass out.”

Danny’s anger ignited for a moment. “I’m not a fucking pregnant woman! This isn’t a Lamaze class!” he wheezed. 

His temper fading as quickly as it sparked as the walls began closing in around him, Danny would have crumpled to the floor had the man not kept his hold on Danny. 

“Okay fine, then listen to me,” said the other man, his tone becoming slow and calm. “Right now, neurotransmitters in your brain have sent the wrong signal, activating your sympathetic nervous system. You listening? You just gotta ride this out until your parasympathetic nervous system restores your body to normal state, okay?”

At the volley of multisyllabic scientific words pouring from the mouth of a man that Danny may have pre-judged to be a Neanderthalic gym floozie, Danny blinked his eyes open to see the man’s face inches away from his, hazel-green eyes peering at him in earnest even as the man’s hands slid from his biceps to the tops of Danny’s shoulders and squeezed. 

“You wanna speaking fucking English, man? I’m a bit busy having a panic attack, I don’t have the energy to run your words through a translator, okay?” Danny panted. 

“Okay, okay, alright. Your body is lying to you. It’s telling you you’re in danger, but you’re not, okay? It’s a glitch.”

“It’s a glitch?” Danny asked, his eyebrows raising as he tried to parse the man’s words, even as his breathing slowed. Uncomfortable in his hunched position, he lowered himself so that he was sat on the floor, back to the wall, his elbows propped up on his knees as the other man’s grip on his shoulders fell away. Danny refused to miss the unexpected comfort that hold had brought with it. 

“It’s a glitch. Your brain thinks you’re in danger, you’re not, I promise, you’re safe.”

“You can’t promise that. What if we run out of oxygen?” Danny’s mouth voiced his primary concern, even as the more rational part of his brain told him that if lack of oxygen was indeed his main worry, then perhaps he should stop gulping in the limited air as though he’d just finished running a marathon on no training. 

“We won’t run out of oxygen,” the other man promised, clear amusement evident in his voice. 

“Oh yeah? What, you got oxygen tanks in one of the pockets of your cargo pants?”

“No, but I’m a trained Navy SEAL, and I’ve gotten people out of worse situations. If I have to, I’ll get you outta here via the hatch, through the elevator shaft.”

“What the fuck are you, Rambo?” Danny opened his eyes as he felt his heart and breathing begin to calm. Or as his ‘parasympathetic nervous system restored his body to its normal state’. Fuck, of course he’d be stuck in an elevator with Green Eyes, The Science Guy. 

“Rambo’s army. I just said I was navy. Keep up, will ya?”

Danny’s lingering anxiety was wiped clean as a flood of anger surged through him. Who the everloving fuck was this guy?

“Who the everloving fuck are you?”

The man grinned, and for fuck’s sake, Danny was struck for maybe not the first time just how chiseled, tanned, and downright handsome this six foot something asshole was. 

“I’m Steve. And who the everloving fuck are you?”

* * *

It took all of Steve’s willpower to not grin harder as the blond man continued to glower at him as though Steve had just slept with his wife, mother, and sister. A large part of him was relieved that he’d managed to distract the man from hyperventilating and passing out from lack of oxygen from what was clearly a bad case of claustrophobia, but he’d be lying to himself if he thought his sole purpose in riling the man up was to distract him. 

In all fairness, Steve had always had a weakness for muscled blond men with bright blue eyes. 

‘Danny,” the other man finally said in response to Steve’s question, his tone wary. 

“Hi, Danny. You okay now, or do I need to hold your hand?”

Steve regretted his pathetic attempt at a joke when Danny’s cheeks turned slightly pink and his mouth opened to clearly put Steve in his rightful place but Steve was quicker, holding his hand up in apology. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But honestly, you okay now?”

Danny closed his mouth but continued to look at Steve with suspicion in his eyes, as though he was waiting for Steve to take another crack at him. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem, man, anytime.” Steve glanced at his watch, noting five minutes had already passed by since the elevator they were in had ground to a halt. Twisting his body so instead of kneeling in front of Danny he was now sitting shoulder to shoulder with the man, Steve made himself comfortable. 

"So, uh, what brought you out here?" Steve raised his eyebrows and turned to look at Danny when he felt a glare aimed in his direction in response to what he thought was a perfectly innocent question. He may have only been out of the navy a week but Steve didn't think his normal people conversational skills were that rusty. Not that he had many people to practice on. "What?" He asked when the glare continued. 

"We moving on to small talk now?" 

"What, you'd rather we go back to the 'you hyperventilating, me trying to talk you down' part of the day?" 

Even though Steve barely had any basis for his reasoning considering he didn't know this man at all, he still found himself surprised when Danny didn't fight him on his words, maybe with a defense of how Danny hadn't been hyperventilating, Steve had been imagining things. 

"Fine. By out here, do you mean this elevator, the law firm of Douwe, Cheathem, and Howe, or this volcanic death trap of an island? Take your pick."

Steve blinked, not knowing where to start. "Douwe, Cheathem, and Howe? The law firm's Miller-Mohai."

Danny rolled his eyes even as a slight smile appeared on his face. Steve frowned, repeating the name Danny has ascribed to the company again in his head. 

Douwe, Cheathem, and Howe. _Do-we_ , _cheat-him_ , and _how_. 

Steve nodded when it clicked in his brain, a wry smile on his face. "Nice. Not a big fan of lawyers, huh buddy?" 

"Nope," the man replied, popping the p. "Not when they're trying to help my ex-wife change our binding custody agreement so that she can force my kids to move _yet again_ , so I have to change jobs _yet again,_ just so she can follow her new husband around _yet again_." 

"So you're in Hawaii because your ex remarried?" 

"Yeah. I'm from Jersey." Steve refrained from pointing out that Danny's accent had basically tattooed the New Jersey flag on the man's forehead from the moment he spoke, but he appreciated the confirmation nonetheless. "We met there, married there, had two beautiful kids there, but clearly that wasn't enough. She remarried last year, I followed the kids out here about six months ago, left behind everything in Jersey just so I can have them for three nights a week." 

"Why didn't you just fight for custody in Jersey, keep them there?"

Danny shrugged. "Rachel was going to move out here with or without them. I wasn't going to be the reason they grew up without a mother for most of the year."

Steve nodded his head slowly as if he understood when in reality, he was confused. His own mother had left his dad, his sister, and him when Steve had been a teenager, his sister Mary still in elementary school. His father had dealt with being a single parent by shipping off an angry, heartbroken, trouble-making Steve to boarding school and Mary to Aunt Deb in case she was planning to follow her big brother's example. Yet here was Danny, leaving behind his home, his family, his friends and his job to move eight thousand miles away just so that his kids could see both parents every week. 

Huh. 

"You got any pictures?" Steve asked. He'd served with enough fathers during his time in the forces to know that this question was guaranteed to be answered with a show and tell. Steve figured it would work to keep Danny distracted and waste another minute or two at the very cheap cost of Steve telling the man that yes, his kids were cute, even though to Steve they all looked the same. 

Ten minutes and a "ya think?" later, both men still had their heads together as they peered at photos of an eight-year-old Grace and four-year-old Charlie on Danny's phone. 

"You should take them to the Kahala hotel, swim with the dolphins, I'm sure Grace and Charlie would love that," Steve suggested as he peered at a photo of Danny's adorable daughter with dolphin trainer Barbie.

"Yeah, maybe. A professor's salary can only stretch that far if you take into account a three-bedroom house, feeding two growing kids and having enough for three round trip tickets to Jersey and a decent enough lawyer to keep Rachel's minions at bay."

Steve jerked his head back, shooting Danny an appraising look. "You're a professor?" 

"No need to look so surprised, I'm more than just a pretty face "

Steve rolled his eyes to prevent himself from agreeing that yes, Danny definitely was more than just a pretty face. He'd felt those biceps. 

"Whatever. What do you teach? Where?"

"Economics, at the UH. Got lucky the job came up when it did, otherwise might have had to go back to walking the mean streets of Oahu."

Steve blushed as the image of Danny as a prostitute entered his mind, and this must have been evident on his face as Danny snorted and thumped Steve's knee with his knuckles. "Stop that. I was a cop before I taught. Worked homicide for a few years before Charlie was born."

If anything, that made Steve look at Danny even more, his head tilting to the side as he tried to envision Danny as a cop as his father had been. But damn if Danny didn't seem more of a cop over a lecturer any day. 

"What made you stop?" 

In a way, Steve wished he hadn't asked the question. It was never a good reason why a cop stopped being a cop. If it wasn't death, it was an injury in the line of duty and whilst Steve knew, perhaps more than most others, that not all wounds were physical or visible to the naked eye, Danny's words didn't seem to suggest it was a forced retirement from the force. But the other possible reasons were worse, and normally had to do with corruption, and Steve liked that reason even less. He barely knew the man, but he'd already had an idea in his head of the kind of man Danny was, and being a dirty cop didn't mesh with it at all. 

Danny shrugged. "I guess on the surface it was for Rachel. I'd almost died when she was pregnant with Grace and had another close call before we were thinking of having a second. She said she had no interest in raising kids as a cop's widow, and I'd always wanted a big family, so something had to give. I'd majored in economics at college, and at least this way I still had a positive impact on people as opposed to doing some boring office job. But at the end of the day, I get to see my kids grow up and they don’t have to worry about me getting shot. It was an easy sacrifice to make." Danny's eyes were fixed on a photo on his phone, a young Grace holding a newborn Charlie, and Steve knew that his mind was far away right now, with Danny only vaguely aware of that fact he was trapped in an elevator with a stranger. 

Danny's distraction gave Steve enough time to rub his eyes with his hand. If he'd thought Danny's dedication to his kids to still have a mother was honorable, he couldn't imagine the kind of love that would lead him to sacrifice his job for them. Steve had found himself in the navy, become the man he was today because of the navy, barely spent any time with his father, Mary and Aunt Deb because of his job. He couldn't imagine giving up his position for his family, not when he had been serving the greater good in a job that he honestly thought he was born and made for.

Right up until the moment his job had gotten the closest thing he had to a brother killed right in front of his eyes. 

Clearing his throat, Steve turned his focus back to Danny again. "Yet here you are."

"Yet here I am. Turns out being a cop was a nice coverup for the fact that I wasn't the man Rachel wanted to grow old with." Danny's smile was wistful, reminding Steve of the rare few times his dad mentioned his mother - nostalgic for a past they'd shared, but realistic about the future they never would. 

Danny must have noticed that he was being stared at before he cleared his throat and poked Steve in the kneecap. "Okay, Danny Hour over. What brings a trained Navy SEAL to a fancy lawyer's office at eleven am on a Thursday morning?"

Steve shrugged, wondering how he could turn the conversation back to Danny again. "Legal stuff, what else? But hey, you've only been here six months, right? Have you been hiking on the Haʻikū Stairs yet?"

"Na uh, you're not getting away with that. Talk." Danny poked him in the knee again and Steve had to reign himself in before Danny learned that members of the general public did not just poke highly decorated SEALs and live to tell the tale. 

But Steve was feeling pity for the man, what with his claustrophobia and custody issues, so he settled for wrapping his hand around Danny's finger and keeping it hostage in his lap. He sighed as Danny's finger wiggled in his grip as a silent motion to go on.

"My dad passed away when I was on a mission, heart attack. I came back for his funeral early this week, and to sort out his estate." Danny's finger stopped wriggling in its attempt to escape Steve's hold and instead Danny's thumb came to rub against the back of Steve's hand instead. 

Steve couldn't remember that last time he'd experienced such casual physical touch beyond a handshake or a clap on the shoulder. 

"I'm sorry for your loss," Danny said, his voice quiet even as his thumb continued its back and forth on Steve's hand. 

Steve shrugged. "We weren't that close. I haven't been home in years."

"Still."

"Yeah."

There was silence for a moment, long enough for Steve to realize that they'd been stuck in this motionless elevator for over forty minutes with no indication that a rescue was forthcoming. 

He would give it another ten minutes, and then he was going to go up through the hatch to sort out this issue. It was getting warm in the elevator and the last thing he wanted was for Danny to start panicking again. Besides, if Steve remembered correctly, schools let out in a few hours, and Thursday was the start of Danny's time with his kids. 

"How long you in Hawaii for?"

Steve turned to look at Danny, releasing his hold on Danny's finger when he realized he hadn't yet let go, and scratched the bridge of his nose. "Uh, don't know. I'm thinking of going into the Reserves, maybe taking a step back for a bit, figure out what's next."

"Really?" 

"Yeah. Why?" 

Danny shrugged. "You just strike me as Mr. Go Go Go, you know? Laser focus, eye on the prize, for God and country, all that."

"Yeah, that sounds like me, but…" Steve stopped talking as images from his last mission came to the forefront of his mind, a flash of red leaking between his fingers, blue eyes closing forever. 

"But?"

"But maybe I've done my time, you know?" Steve hoped that would be enough for Danny because no way was this cramped space going to be where he aired his grief. 

"Yeah, okay." Danny's tone seemed to suggest he was letting go of the topic, so the tension in Steve's shoulders eased. But another part of Steve told him this was a momentary pause, akin to the pause that occurred when an adversary reloaded their weapons and geared up for round two. Not that Steve saw Danny as an adversary. Far from it. 

They sat in silence for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. 

That is until Steve noticed the slight but gradual increase in Danny's respiration. Between one breath and the next, he moved from sitting shoulder to shoulder with Danny to kneeling in front of him, grabbing Danny's wrist from where his hands had come up to cover his face as his breathing ratcheted up even more. 

"Hey hey, Danny, it's fine, we're fine," Steve assured, looking up at the hatch again. If he put his feet on the railing surrounding three of the four walls of the elevator car, he should be able to open the hatch without needing a leg up from Danny. 

His mental plans were interrupted when a screeching sound and a loud thud preceded a sharp jerk that has Danny's breathing becoming harsher in the pursuing silence. Another jerk had Steve wrapping his arms around Danny even though his brain was telling him that it was quite unlikely that the cables were giving away, and that this is more the result of the technicians working to fix the issue.

His brain was proven right when with another jerk, the elevator resumed its smooth descent that began almost an hour ago, and a few seconds later, the bell cheerfully dinged to tell them they've arrived at the twelfth floor. 

The doors opened to reveal a woman in a bikini top and jean shorts, and a man in a security guard uniform, a baton on his belt.

"You guys okay? We're so sorr- Steve? Steve McGarrett?"

Steve unwrapped himself from around Danny and stood up, looking at the man who'd said his name even as he kept a hand out for Danny who gripped it and pulled himself to standing. 

A lightbulb went off in Steve's brain. "Chin Ho Kelly? That you?"

"The one and only! I thought you looked familiar." Chin pointed to the camera in the corner of the elevator, a wide grin splitting his face. 

"You okay, brah?" The young woman spoke, looking towards Danny which made Steve look to him in time to see Danny give a tight smile. Realizing the reason behind Danny's tension, Steve stepped to the side and allowed Danny to get off the elevator first before following him.

"Yeah, thanks. I'm assuming you're the reason behind the fix?" 

"Yeah, brah. Kono Kalakaua, elevator-fixer extraordinaire."

Chin nodded towards Kono. "My cousin. She's a whiz with machines. I keep telling management that they need to sort out the elevators but they refuse to pay for a proper maintenance company. I noticed through the cameras that you guys were stuck but the elevator repairmen would have taken two hours to get here."

"But I was dropping some lunch off for Chin so he asked me to take a look," Kono said with a smile towards Steve and Danny, her youthful energy a sharp contrast to Danny's sudden reserve. 

"I'm glad you were," Danny said before glancing at his watch. "Anyway, I've gotta go pick up my kids from school. Thanks for the fix," he said to Kono. Turning to Chin, he added, "Tell your management to expect a strongly worded letter about their building maintenance."

Finally, he turned to Steve, an odd look in his eyes. "Thanks for the distraction," Danny said finally before giving all three of them a final nod before turning away and heading to the stairwell. 

Steve watched him go. 

* * *

Reaching into his pocket as he finally reached the parking garage, Danny thumbed the button which unlocked his car, the Camaro’s familiar beep guiding him to where he’d parked it hours ago when he’d first arrived for the ten am meeting with Rachel and her lawyer. He'd just about opened the door of his car when he heard the sound of somebody running towards him, his instincts from years as a cop making him look towards the source even though chances of it being a threat were low. He doubted Rachel had figured out that he was still in the building, nor would she deign to run after him. 

Instead, it was the second least likely person jogging towards him.

"Danny, hey, wait up," Steve called out as he crossed the distance between the elevator bank and Danny's car. 

"What's up, you need a ride?" Danny asked, confused, as Steve came to a stop in front of him. Of course the man would take the elevators even though he'd just spent an hour trapped in one. Danny knew his instincts had been right when they told him that the man in front of him was lacking a common sense gene. He may have been in the middle of a panic attack, but he'd noted the looks Steve had been giving to the elevator hatch and had Kono not fixed the elevator there and then, he was sure Steve was planning on getting him out through the elevator shaft, like someone who'd watched a bit too much Mission Impossible as a child. 

"Well, yeah, if you're offering," Steve agreed but Danny's eyes narrowed. 

"But that's not why you followed me down here for."

"Yes."

"So?" Jesus, the man must have been knocked on the head a lot during his time in the navy.

"So what?"

Danny rolled his eyes. "You chase me down here for a purpose?"

"I'd hardly call this a chase. I took the elevator." Steve pointed over his shoulder as though Danny needed to be told where they were. Bastard. It was a miracle Danny hadn't punched him in the last hour or so. He credited being the father to two kids as the cause of his even temperament. 

"Smartass. Get in the car. Unless you need a ride to the other side of the island, I have some time to kill before I go get the kids."

"Thanks man," Steve said as he moved to the passenger side door, whistling as he went. "Sweet ride, buddy."

Ten minutes later they were on the H1 heading to the McGarrett home, Danny's fingers tapping on the steering wheel as he waited for Steve to reveal his initial intent behind coming after Danny. He was fairly sure he'd seen the outline of a set of car keys in Steve's pants but if this guy was willing to leave his car behind, then who was Danny to stop him? Besides, he'd been a cop for over seven years - he knew how to out-wait a suspect. 

"So," Steve began and Danny bit down on a smile as he internally cheered at his victory. 

"So."

"The kids go back to Rachel's on Sunday, right?"

"Yeah, in the afternoon. Why?" 

"Why don't you all come by Sunday morning then? I have a private beach behind my house, they can swim, make sandcastles, have fun without being surrounded by tourists."

"Oh yeah? And then what?"

"And then maybe we can both drop them off at their mother's and I take you out for dinner." Danny glanced over only to see that Steve was looking out the window, and whilst the man's voice was casual, it was hard to miss how tight his fists were clenched in his lap. 

"Dinner?" 

"Yeah." The fists clenched harder and it took all of Danny's willpower and his desire to keep the car on the road to not reach over and forcefully unclench Steve's hands before his nails left an imprint on his palms. 

"Huh."

"Is that a no?"

"No."

"Is that a yes?" He had to give it to Steve, the man was determined. Danny liked that quality. He liked that quality a lot. 

"It depends," he replied, his hand leaving the gear stick to waver in mid-air. 

"On what?"

"On whether the dinner is a dinner, or a dinner-dinner." Danny hoped the thumping of his heart wasn't audible in the small confines of his sports car, his sympathetic nervous system had caused him enough embarrassment that day. 

A quick glance to his right and he saw Steve was now staring at him, a knowing glint in his eyes. 

"That depends," Steve said, echoing Danny's words from a moment ago.

"On what?" 

"On which you're saying yes to." 

"I'll say yes to dinner-dinner on one condition," Danny said, putting the other man out of his misery. Steve had, after all, invited his kids over to his house first of all so they could have a private space to run around and okay, God knew how much Danny's claustrophobia also came with a side helping of a strong aversion to crowds, therefore Steve needed to be rewarded for his kindness. And if Danny benefitted too from this, then that was just a side bonus. A very nice side bonus, but a side bonus nonetheless. 

"Jesus, you're high maintenance," Steve said but when Danny glanced over he saw that the man was smiling, relief evident in his eyes. "What's the condition?"

"No fucking elevators." 

"Deal."

The dinner-dinner on Sunday evening also turned into breakfast. The first of many. 

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my 3rd AU different first meeting, and I think I've noticed a pattern in how I write them which I *hope* reflects canon:
> 
> 1) The very first interaction always has a sense of antagonism  
> 2) Danny's fundamental Danny-ness is what breaks through Steve's fresh-out-of-the-navy Mr. Roboto act  
> 3) Steve has to take the first step and start/push the relationship/friendship because Danny's focus will always be on his kids first  
> 4) Danny's awesome father-ness is what draws Steve because his own parents were useless (or appeared to be at the time)
> 
> I'm actually quite pleased with this fic, so I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. As always, your kudos and comments are much loved and appreciated. For those waiting for an update on my WIPs, I haven't forgotten them!


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